~ my Potato Point life

Monthly Archives: October 2013

Brown is a colour that doesn't have a good press. Words that come immediately to mind are drab, nondescript, murky, muddy, unremarkable. If heroines have brown hair instead of blonde or red or raven, they have to have eyes that are liquid pools or some other characteristic of similar distinction.

I've been charmed for the last few weeks by the blossoming of creativity in the Secret Fairy Garden near the old tip on the road into my village. Each time I look something new has been added. Today I finally stopped to photograph in the grey light of a blessedly cool damp day. The blue curtains fluttered, the fairy surfer caught a wave and the freshly planted petunias surrounded the bole of the splendid spotted gum hosting this artistry. It reminds me of the year of the trolls, when the bridge over the creek was renamed Troll Bridge, and troll dolls took up residence along its side-boards.

In an idle moment, I flicked open my Polish news site at http://www.thenews.pl/. Here's a sampling of today's news in my second home. It captured my attention for a few reasons: the persistence of the past in the Polish consciousness; the economic state of Poland; and parallels to preoccupations in Australian news.

WHEN DOES THE PAST END? (and should it?)

Human Rights court “not competent” to give 1940 Katyń Massacre ruling

In 1940, 20000 Polish officers, police and intellectuals who were prisoners of war were murdered at Katyń by the Russians, with Stalin's approval. There are claims that the soviet investigation carried out between 1990 and 2004 was inadequate, but the European Court of Human Rights can't assess the investigation because the European Convention of Human Rights came into being after the investigation began.

1813 Battle of the Nations Commemorated

There were 15000 Poles in Napoleon's army when he was defeatedby Russian, Prussian, Austrian and Swedish forces and exiled to Elba, ending Polish hopes for independence. Poland had been wiped from the map in the late 18th century when it was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria, but in 1807 Napoleon created the Duchy of Warsaw from the divided lands. Marshal Jozef Poniatowski died in the battle and remains “a model of Polish honour.”

Prosecutors drop Red Army rape statue case

Prosecutors in Gdansk have dropped investigation into the illegal public placement of a statue of a Russian soldier raping a pregnant woman. The initial charge was “public incitement to hatred on the basis of nationality”: the artist is now facing a fine for an “indecent prank.” The Russian ambassador expressed outrage, on the grounds that it “insulted the memories of 600 000 Russian soldiers who fell in the struggle for the freedom and independence of Poland”. However, historians estimate that 100 000 Polish women were in fact raped by soviet soldiers between 1944 and 1947, during the liberation of Poland.

POLISH ECONOMY

Komorowski begins South Korea, Mongolia visit

The purpose of the visit is to develop business contacts with South Korea and to learn from the South Korean experience, specifically how to avoid the “average wealth” trap and speed up Poland's economic development.

Apartment prices continue to fall in Poland

A survey covering 18 cities has noted a drop in apartment prices, ranging from 6.1% to 2.1%.

COMMON CONCERNS

What Poles leave behind in Afghanistan

Polish troops are pulling out of Afghanistan within a year. They have handed over equipment from the Ghazni military base to NGOs, as one of their last acts of humanitarian aid.

Poles' literacy and numeracy below OECD average

A 24-nation study of 16-65 year olds by the OECD finds that Poles perform below average in literacy and numeracy tests, though the younger generation is performing better.

Animal rights group wants Mufti punished for illegal halal slaughter

Chief Mufti, Tomasz Miskiewicz, killed a lamb without prior stunning as part of the ritual of the Fast of the Sacrifice. He claims that he was “maintaining the culture and heritage of the Polish Tatars and Muslims”. Slaughter without prior stunning has been illegal since 1st January, 2013, regardless of religious customs.

Apologies for the crazy fontage. For some reason I can't remove bold, or the enlarged heading.

Fire defeated water last weekend. Nothing like a fire building power close to home to focus the mind on raking, and displace the pleasures of rowing gently on the waterways. The fire at Buckyjumba is surreptitiously burning away while attention is on the drastic Blue Mountains fires, doubling its size in the last few days. It only needs heat and wind to beat it into a frenzy of flame and destruction heading this way. It's interesting that both fire and boating drive you obsessively to weather forecasts, a reminder of how weather-dependent humans are, despite our attempts at insulation.

However, raking has lost none of its pleasures. As I dragged a pile of leaves from a hollow at the base of a casuarina, I noticed a fat, short maroon stalk which muttered “Orchid? Maybe?” at me. I creaked to my knees for a closer look, and it was indeed a hyacinth orchid. * When I revisited it the next day, fearing wallaby depredations, I saw its companions: dianella buds, a faint almost invisible blue, on a slender stalk rising from robust spear-shaped leaves.

My tendency to scarify the hillside, fearing the power of a stray leaf to combust the house, was brought to an abrupt halt when I realised that I was scraping moss from a very dry rocky hillside. I'd been dragging it out in small mats, along with the matted casuarina needles. Fortunately I am now using a rake with plastic tines, rather than my blue, metal behemoth, so I could reduce my savagery to gentleness and leave moss behind as I removed the covering of leaves.

The hillside has a number of young spotted gums. Their bark is beginning to peel, folding back to reveal fresh green slits or messier doorways of bark.

During an early morning rake in an onshore breeze after rain, reassuring drops scattered from the trees and the dry scritch of leaves that had been my weekend continuo faded into the silence of slight dampness.

Who'd have thought a trip to Moruya would gift me so many encounters with past selves from so many years? All because of the people I bumped into.

The teacher in Broken Hill

Once upon a time, I lived in Broken Hill for five years. During that time, I confirmed my own interests, lived alone for the first time, bought a house for $30 000, went through menopause, started a women's group and a writing group, fell in love with the desert and my house, and returned to school teaching. I learnt calligraphy, made paper, and shared a house with an artist. I camped on the banks of the Darling in Kinchega National Park and watched hawks fishing. I walked into the desert in the afternoons after work and spoke at a Reclaim the Night celebration (in the dark and without the benefit of my specs which I'd managed to tread on as I marched.) I wrote frequently and read a piece about a sweat lodge on ABC local radio. I festooned the car with balloons to meet my daughter's train when she returned from four years overseas and missed her because I forgot the half hour time difference. I shared the house with my other daughter who often asked “Who's the adult here?” and I mourned my two boys, left with their father back on the coast.

The market gardener

Once upon a time, I worked in our five-acre market garden. I planted and weeded and picked, and ended each day grubby and whacked. I washed carrots in the river, husked mountains of corn cobs, cooked up gallons of tomato sauce. I became a connoisseur of zucchinis and could estimate a kilo to the microgram. Each Friday we picked manically, and on Saturday morning I'd head off to the Moruya market, the roof of the 1967 Corolla piled high with cauliflowers, the inside packed (in season) with spinach, parsley, broad beans, capsicums, potatoes, green beans. I'd set up a stall – a door on wooden boxes – and reconnoitre veggie shop prices. We never had any money, so the change box began empty. Invariably the first buyer wanted a 20c cucumber and only had a $50 note. Occasionally there were hagglers who wanted a 20c cucumber for 15c. At the end of the day, I'd return home with the weekly shop and precious cash. We also had a roadside stall beside the garden with an honesty jar. Once it contained a bullet. Once I was bailed up on the beach by a guilty customer brandishing the money he didn't pay a year ago. Once we watched in disbelief as our neighbour ran his ute backwards and forwards over the boxes that constituted the stall. Our other enemies were grubs, friends who wanted to stop and talk, hot winds, Riley's cows, hailstorms, and of course floods and drought.

The Nerrigundah socialiser

Once upon a time, I socialised at the Nerrigundah Ag Bureau. I was one of those who smeared the walls with a rendering including cow shit. There were dances, dinners and cabarets. The kids could run wild in the dark and collapse in the tent when they'd had enough. It was there I listened to a rhapsody about being present as you swept the floor, and shared a log with one of the few totally unpleasant drunks of my life. It was there I toke in the many aspects of the alternative ideology and played pool on Ladies' Night. It was there my sons and their mates held Friday night jam sessions. There were also cricket days on a nearby reserve. Once I agreed to be the recorder of scores, a thankless job that required more concentration than I was capable of and left me far more fatigued than the cricketers.

The literacy consultant

Once upon a time I worked in schools all over the south coast as a literacy consultant. I'd often be away from home three nights a week. I spent a lot of time in classrooms, trying out advice I was giving teachers. Sometimes it worked; other times it was an embarrassing failure. I made PowerPoints with Year 2, wrote the longest paragraph in the world with year 4, expanded sentences with Year 1, provoked Year 6 into splendid complex sentences, and battled with the role of the full stop across all grades. In staff meetings I surprised some teachers and put others to sleep. I found interesting places to overnight. Room 6 at the Great Southern pub in Eden where they apologised for a price rise ($20 per night to $22 per night). Bumblebrook near Candelo, where a luxurious king size bed filled the room (they'd ordered a queen size and the drive was too rugged to argue when a king arrived). The old nurses quarters at Delegate, where I paid for a room and ended up with the whole house. A cabin on Jervis Bay where the bunks became my filing cabinet.

The photographer

Once upon a time, I owned a brownie box camera and produced black and white shots of dubious quality, which I put in an album with charcoal grey paper, using photo corners. Photography lurked in the background until I moved to Broken Hill in the early 1990s. The art teacher was a photographer and his stark black and white shots of old machinery in the regen area and a wilting sunflower against a corrugated iron fence reactivated my interest. I began borrowing the school camera at the weekend, and finally invested in a camera of my own – a golden non-digital that travelled with me to the Snowy, through the backblocks of Broken Hill and to Egypt, Syria and Jordan, recording bark, desert, snow gums (that reel of film disappeared forever), rainforest, beach, ruins, mosques and an archaeological dig at Pella. Just before I retired I bought a digital and began photographing every day. I figured I would've spent $1000 on development in the first month if I'd still been using reels of film. That camera masticated orchids, shells, more bark, and rock faces with its three megapixels, but it was a bit bulky for travel. Before my first trip to Warsaw, I put it aside and bought my current one, which has recorded rock pools, shells, beach pebbles, Poland and grandchildren.

An afternoon in Moruya yielded me at least as many memories as Proust activated with his more famous madeleine.

From Marcel Proust “Swann's way”

And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated panel which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I was sent before luncheon, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves and bend, take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, permanent and recognisable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings, taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, all from my cup of tea.

We are becoming connoisseurs of wind and tide. If we don't read them right, we run into sandbars and heavy going, rowing against instead of gliding with. Not that I've handled the oars yet. The builder is enjoying them too much.

Our third weekend on the water christened our boat camera – a dry christening, fortunately. Now I have new subject matter to play with – the banks, the reflections, the oar ripples. We carry a small trolley and a pulley system to load and unload the boat, but we haven't yet used them. I'll be glad when we do: I fear for fragile backs every time we drag.

On Saturday we launched at Horse Island and rowed along Cambathin Island past tall luxuriant boobiallas and casuarinas, wearing staghorns and maybe an orchid. There were inviting landing places and we cogitated a future picnic and exploration. As we rounded the end of the island the water grew busier, with a couple of launches far too big for the lake with its 4 km speed limit and no wash zones, so we turned back into the wind. As we were pulling the boat out of the water a kingfisher flashed past and sat on a dead branch to watch.

The Sunday weather looked a bit problematic, and wind and tide didn't match, so we set off early to launch at the Tuross Bridge. The morning light gave wonderful reflections as the oars dipped and shimmered them. The bridge receded and began to look quaint instead of purely functional, mountains tracing a blue outline in the distance. The tide was quite low, so we woggled around dodging sandbars and testing hypotheses about where we'd find deep channels. At one point, the oarsman got out and pushed me and the boat over a narrow bar, rather than go back and round the island on the other side. Soon we'll know our way around the shallows, insofar as an ever-changing river allows this. Along the banks wattles were in their prime; the blossom-icing on brush Kurrajong was raggy; callistemon planted by Landcare drew the eye with their crimson, and huge trees (swamp mahoganies?) leant towards their reflections. Ordered flights of pelicans and shags (or herons?) glided overhead. There were plenty of small boats, sprouting hopeful fishing lines, and the odd speedster, oblivious to rules and regulations. When we reached Cambathin Island, it was time to turn with the wind and head back for lunch, a beer and the customary afternoon snooze, my only excuse sun-fatigue.

After the unpleasantness of a tooth scrape and the triumph of finding a suitable boating camera at a reasonable price, I strolled along the foreshores of Wagonga Inlet to revisit the photograhic pleasures of mangroves: reflections, ripples, shadows, and twisted intertwined trunks.

The boat – the real boat – now has a continuous rail underneath, making it easy to slide up the hillside, onto the ute and into the water. However, our first attempt to launch it it at Comerang bridge bogged the ute in sand. With the help of rearranged pebbles, a raincoat, spare trousers, and a young kayakker camping with his mates nearby, we unbogged, parked on firm road and tugged the boat down sand for its second launch. I arranged myself in the stern with space to stretch my legs along the inside decking, which is now in place, although still unglued. I lounged back against a cushion like a nineteenth century lady, although I didn't have a frilled parasol and an elegant dress, elegantly draped: just a hat that makes me look like a charmless lampshade and a life jacket to guard against mishaps.

We skimmed under the bridge and headed off down the river, trying to match the banks against the Eurobodalla road that has been our familiar artery now for 40 years. We recalled the evil poaching days of our youth when we used to string a net across the river with the help of the Bismarck, half a 44 gallon drum and all the boat we could afford. We'd throw a haul of mullet on the barbie: fresh, they tasted wonderful, without any of the despised mud flavor.

We rowed down the river seeing the world in unfamiliar dimensions. Down … the replicating reflections, undisturbed until oar ripples reached them. Through … shimmering patches of light to a sandy bottom. Out … to a line of mountains, changing position and visibility with every curve of the river: Comerang, Gulaga, Hanging Mountain, Sugarloaf. Mistletoe blossoms floated by and so did tiny amoeba-shaped sand islands: when they were tapped with an oar, grains of sand detached and disappeared down into the water. A flash of orange proved to be an azure kingfisher, and water monitors lounged on dead logs, heads alert. Large dark fish shapes zapped through the water as we zigzagged our way around sand bars, at one point gouging a track in the sand which was still visible when we returned by the same route.

It was a sand bar that stopped us after about 4 kilometres and we headed back to launch point. One of the kayakkers came over to lend his hefty youth to the business of reloading the boat on the ute, and it flew along the sand and up the ramp.

Sunday

It's a long weekend, so we went out early to avoid holiday crowds. We launched near Bumbo bridge, and headed upriver to meet the end point of yesterday's row. As we we putting the boat in the water the sun caught a flash of iridescent green as a flight of ducks took off.

The early morning light and a gentle wind gave us shivering reflections, unlike yesterday's still ones: the rusty stamens of casuarinas, the white pea flowers of black locust, the intermittent patches of green bank, the delicate fronds of maiden hair fern, the pale trunks of eucalypts. A pair of hawks crisscrossed the river ahead of us; three plovers (species to be determined) flew beside us, red legs trailing; pelicans cruised along the other bank; a kingfisher's call was very near, but we couldn't spot the elusive songster.

A black and white cow peered at us curiously through the low branches of a tree and we were amused until we saw another cow, obviously trapped, struggling to get out of the river. We turned around, with one reach to go to meet yesterday's row, looking for landmarks so we could find the farmer and let him know. The granite church at Bodalla looming in the distance gave us the necessary orientation.

We rowed back lazily against tide and freshening wind, and into the hotting-up sun. The oars created miniature whirlpools and dropped circles of ripples onto the ruffled surface. Their shadows appeared on the sand below us. The rower changed position to scull, but a few adjustments need to be made before he can scull effectively.

Movement caught our attention. A head was looking at us, attached to a sinuous body coiling along the surface of the water. As we debated its markings – python? or tiger snake? … hard to tell for sure when the pattern was wet – it changed direction and began heading towards us, drawn by the vibration of oars and the movement of the boat. We backed off, until it lost interest and retreated to a dead tree. A python in the boat could be charming: not so a tiger snake.

Our predictions of crowds at the launching place proved wrong, as predictions usually do. We tugged our boat out without drama, although not without effort, and headed off to find the farmer, a beer and an afternoon doze. I don't know why lounging back and lazy looking is so fatiguing. I haven't even touched the oars yet.

Monday

Plans for a Monday row were aborted by the weather forecast: rain and high winds. I like the sense of being dominated by nature in this way, needing to know what it's up to and accommodating it.

Note: The forecast was wrong! It was a beautiful sunny day with a light wind, but gluing in the decking, raking up and burning off took precedence over boating.

This blog has been brought to you without photos because, sadly, my dunking last weekend killed our boating camera. I have a sneaking suspicion that I see more and store more when I'm not depending on the camera as an adjunct memory and set of eyes.

I've lived near Bodalla for 36 years. Yesterday I followed a track I'd never been along before, with a view out over a full dam to rolling hills. When I spotted this flower, I met two challenges: blue is for some reason hard to photograph and I'm still having trouble with closeups. As I pressed the button, I saw the fly land, and to my delight captured both insect and blue flower.